The Covid-19 Inquiry’s latest report says that the Tories’ VIP Lane ‘embedded unfairness’ as £10 billion was wasted on unusable PPE – while nurses were forced to wear plastic bags
Tory ministers gave pals “favourable treatment” when buying PPE during the pandemic as Britain’s carers were left unprotected, the Covid-19 Inquiry has found.
Inquiry chair Baroness Heather Hallett concluded there was a “vast” waste of taxpayers money while NHS staff were left “unable to protect themselves or those in their care from dangerous infection”.
Of the £15 billion spent on PPE, almost £10bn was wasted on unusable kit as 3.9 billion items were “not fit for onward distribution”. Nurses told the biggest public inquiry in British history they were forced to wear makeshift PPE such as gowns from plastic bags and bringing in goggles from home.
Lady Hallett said: “The waste of taxpayers’ money was vast. The public must be able to trust that their money is being spent with propriety, fairness and transparency. Public confidence – so important in an emergency – was undermined by the failures in procurement.”
The latest module of the Covid-19 inquiry looked at procurement – the process by which government and public bodies buy goods or services – of PPE, ventilators and testing equipment.
Baroness Hallett “The UK entered the Covid-19 pandemic with its stockpile of PPE in a perilous condition, with shortages of vital stock and large quantities of expired stock left unattended.
“There were also no proper plans for the procurement and distribution of key healthcare equipment in any emergency. This left health and social care workers without adequate PPE to protect themselves, and those for whom they cared, from infection.”
The top judge and crossbench peer criticised the creation of the Tory “VIP Lane” for PPE procurement as a “misguided attempt at prioritisation that embedded unfairness”. The report told how those with “connections to government” received “favourable treatment”. In total £42 billion was spent on PPE, ventilators and testing kit.
Her report said the existence of the VIP Lane was made known initially only to a small group of senior ministers and officials. These included then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Michael Gove who was then Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, as well as ministers Lord Agnew and James Bethell.
Baroness Hallett said the VIP Lane “should not have been set up and should not be repeated”. She told how health bosses and government officials “were also faced with a flood of offers of supply that had to be triaged to identify the credible offers”.
She concluded: “They faced pressure from ministers and others to prioritise some offers based on their source. This led to the controversial High Priority Lane. The source of an offer is undoubtedly relevant to the credibility of an offer – for example an offer from a well-established manufacturer of quality goods is far more worthy of consideration than the well-intentioned but impractical offer from someone prepared to hand-knit PPE.
“However, all offers should be considered on the same objective criteria and connections to government should not lead to favourable treatment.
“Although I have identified no evidence of corruption on the part of ministers or officials, there is evidence of favourable treatment to some suppliers. The allegations of ‘cronyism’, complaints about the quality of some of the PPE obtained and criticism of the surplus PPE acquired have together significantly undermined the reputation of the government procurement system.”
Crucially, a chapter of the report on PPE Medpro – the company led by the husband of former Tory Peer Baroness Michelle Mone – was redacted from the report because it is subject to ongoing criminal proceedings.
The consortium, led by Baroness Mone’s husband Doug Barrowman, was ordered to repay more than £121m for breaching a PPE contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns. The couple have denied wrongdoing. The report said this chapter would be published following the conclusion of criminal proceedings.
The 237-page report on procurement is the fifth of ten set to be published as part of the £200 million inquiry. Political leaders, scientists, medics and bereaved relatives have given evidence at public hearings which started three years ago.
The latest module is calling for emergency stockpiles to be properly funded and maintained in case of future pandemic and warns Britain is currently too reliant on one country for supplies – China.
Lack of PPE
Britain’s PPE stockpile had not been properly maintained and many items had either expired or the expiry date was unknown. A large proportion of the higher spec FFP3 respirator masks were out of date.
One account from a nurse included in the report stated: “We have bare arms and faces. We are on the front line with these patients. I’ve had to wear my own protective goggles from home, a shower cap and colleagues have made makeshift protection wear out of bin bags in order to treat COVID-19 patients.
“We feel we don’t have confidence in the issued PPE on the ward and feel we are at risk of being infected and passing this virus to our families at home.”
Lack of testing kits
Lack of tests was cited as the reason ministers decided they had to discharge the elderly from hospitals and back into care homes untested.
Previous modules of the inquiry heard how this saw the virus spread through care homes killing thousands of elderly residents as well as staff.
The report said that the government’s testing procurement programme was similar to the VIP Lane for PPE in that it sorted offers referred by a politician or senior government official into a ‘priority’ mailbox.
The report stated that “no witness was able to explain why an offer for testing equipment should be inherently more credible because it was connected to a politician or senior government official”.
Lack of lifesaving ventilators
The report said that at the start of the pandemic there were no companies able to manufacture intensive care ventilators in the UK.
China placed restrictions on its companies exporting ventilators and Britain was forced to try to buy them at vastly inflated global prices on a “ventilator procurement Wild West”. The report said at the end of March 2020 the price of ventilators manufactured overseas was doubling every day.
Inquiry Recommendations
- Radically overhauling supply chain resilience and emergency procurement and distribution systems, establishing clear and tested plans before the next pandemic
- Creating an emergency international trade and domestic industrial strategy, treating key healthcare equipment as a strategic national asset
- Setting specific objectives for international trade and domestic industry during a pandemic, encouraging investment, research and development in advanced manufacturing of healthcare equipment
- Digitalising procurement and distribution systems within three years, enabling the real-time collection, sharing and analysis of data across the UK government and devolved administrations
- Improving the composition and management of the pandemic stockpile to reflect the full range of pandemic risks and the diversity of the health and social care workforce
- Establishing a training programme for procurement officials, ensuring sufficient numbers of skilled staff are ready for deployment in an emergency
- Improving transparency, governance and accountability in emergency procurement, so that the public can be confident that money is being spent with propriety and fairness